Ray, Paul, and Sherry Ruth Anderson. The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.

This book, an outgrowth of a 1997 article in American Demographics magazine, outlines Ray's theory that American society is composed of three primary demographic groups - Moderns, Traditionalists, and Cultural Creatives. Most SRI industry marketers believe that the 50 million Cultural Creatives are the appropriate target for socially responsible investment products. The authors present data from one 1994-95 survey showing that Cultural Creatives are statistically more idealistic, more pro-environment, and more attracted to exotic cultures than the other two groups; but less likely to hold conventional religious beliefs or accept a traditional view of female roles in society. Sample size was 1,036 adults, but tests of statistical significance are not provided.

The quantitative work of identifying the three groups is based on data from numerous surveys, including the January 1999 Sustainability Suvey sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the January 1995 Integral Culture Survey sponsored by the Fetzer Institute and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and smaller targeted consumer surveys conducted by organizations like American LIVES, Inc.

According to the authors, "the three subcultures are identified using a battery of seventy questions and a statistical methodology proprietary to American LIVES, Inc... People are classified into subcultures by combining those responses into fifteen values measures, plus a measure of socioeconomic status. The measures are further analyzed into orthogonal dimensions, using factor analysis and multidimensional scaling. A special version of K-means clustering derives the subcultures, which amounts to grouping people by the similarity of their values profiles. The accuracy of the subculture identification is then validated using statistical modeling.